Tarawa Living Memorial

Summary
Never Forget Our Veterans Foundation has developed a plan for a Tarawa Living Memorial to honor the veterans of the Battle of Tarawa, improve the living conditions of the people of South Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati, and reduce the amount of garbage dumped into the Pacific Ocean.

The primary objectives of this initiative include:

Cleaning up "Red Beach," the landing site of the 2nd Marine Division in November 1943, by importing high efficiency incinerators to process garbage and capture heat from the process to power a reverse osmosis desalination system to generate ~40,000 gallons of clean drinking water each day.
Working with local and international governments, NGOs, and others to address sanitation challenges preventing clean-up.
Working with local educational, community, and faith-based organizations to develop an outreach program to teach people, especially children, about the importance of clean water, hygiene, sanitation, recycling, and related topics.

The secondary objectives of this initiative include:

The design and construction of a proper U.S. military cemetery for the hundreds of Americans still buried on Tarawa. Under this objective, NFOVF proposes a cemetery with temporary grave markers for each missing Marine or Sailor to be updated as recoveries of the missing are confirmed by the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).
The design and construction of a new memorial to the Americans killed during the Battle of Tarawa. Under this objective, an existing memorial would be refurbished and relocated to the site of the proposed cemetery with new landscaping and permanent interpretive panels that tell the story of the battle and the many sacrifices made.

Background
The impact of WWII and decades of overpopulation on South Tarawa have left the majority of the local population living in a garbage dump. On the islet of Betio, where more than 1,100 U.S. Marines were killed during and after coming ashore on "Red Beach" to fight Japanese forces in November of 1943, more than 20,000 people, many of them children, live packed into less than two square miles of land. Clean water is scarce, sewer services are rudimentary, sanitation is non-existent, and the local government has no resources to effectively improve the health and well-being of their own people.

Beneath the surface of Betio rest the remains of up to 500 Americans killed during the Battle of Tarawa. Still listed as Missing in Action, these Marines and Sailors paid the ultimate price for our freedom, and the U.S. government, despite making cursory efforts in the years since the war, left these men behind to spend eternity beneath pig sties, latrines, and garbage pits.

The treatment of American war dead in Tarawa is in stark contrast to what can be seen at foreign battlefields and cemeteries around the world, including those managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission in places like Normandy (France), Florence (Italy), or Manila, (Philippines). Though such a setting may never be attainable in Tarawa, much can be done to clean up the battlefield, improve the living conditions of the local population, and honor the men who gave the ultimate sacrifice so that others may live in freedom.

Above: Scenes depicting the pollution plaguing the people of Betio and "Red Beach," where more than 3,400 U.S. Marines were killed or wounded in November 1943.

Photos © Jeremy Edward Shiok.

Above: A comparison between the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in France and Red Beach on Betio in Tarawa, a pollution-ridden islet where no cemetery exists to honor the hundreds of Marines buried there in unmarked graves and listed as Missing in Action since the Battle of Tarawa, which was fought from November 20-23, 1943.

Above: Kurt Hiete (far right) with Hubert Caloud, then Assistant Superintendent of the Manila American Cemetery (far left), Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, and Nei Meme, First Lady of Kiribati, after a wreath laying ceremony at the 2nd Marine Division Memorial on November 20, 2013, on the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Tarawa.